Investors have reportedly lost interest in the massive reconstruction endowment that last year was targeting raising $15 billion.
US investment holding BlackRock stopped its search for investors to back a multi-billion dollar fund for rebuilding Ukraine earlier this year, Bloomberg has reported. Interest reportedly dropped after President Donald Trump retook the White House.
The fund was set to be unveiled at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome next week. It had been close to securing backing from firms supported by the governments of Germany, Italy, and Poland, the outlet wrote on Saturday, citing anonymous sources.
Nevertheless, BlackRock reportedly decided to shelve the talks early this year “due to a lack of interest amid increased uncertainty over Ukraine’s future,” after the US changed its stance towards Kiev under the current administration.
Trump has long promised to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict and has sought avenues to reach a peace deal. He has also pushed European NATO allies to take over the burden of militarily supporting Ukraine. Earlier this week, Washington reportedly froze critical arms deliveries to Kiev to focus on replenishing its own stockpiles, although the US president has insisted some military aid still continues.
The Trump administration “was a notable absence from the fund’s backers in December,” Bloomberg added.
In March of last year, BlackRock vice chairman Philipp Hildebrand indicated that the Ukraine Development Fund was on track to secure at least $2.5 billion from private investors, countries and other grant lenders. A consortium of such investors could finance at least $15 billion towards reconstruction work in Ukraine, he said.
However, a BlackRock spokesperson indicated that the firm is no longer engaged in “any active mandate” with Kiev, having finished its pro-bono consulting work with the Ukraine Development Fund last year, Bloomberg wrote.
The investment firm, which controls roughly $11.6 trillion in assets, owns substantial shares in military-industrial giants such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman, among many others. Armaments produced by these firms, which are supplied to Kiev by its Western backers, have seen extensive use in the conflict.
Moscow has repeatedly condemned foreign arms supplies to Kiev, arguing that they make pro-Ukrainian Western nations party to the conflict, which Russia views as a NATO proxy war. The Kremlin has stated that the recent freeze in US military aid to Kiev will accelerate settlement of the conflict.
Nice PR job. It’s more likely that as Russia has now gained control of major lithium deposits and rare earth minerals in Donbass especially, there is not much left for Blackrock to plunder.
Blaming Trump for gaining office is a pretty weak excuse as Blackrock has major holdings in the MIC and will continue to profit from war and global neocon ambitions. Anyway, the Russians will do a better job of rebuilding Ukraine for much less investment, and do it a lot faster without ripping off the residents.
Nothing to do with Russia seizing the Titanium mines in Ukraine that were owned by Blackrock then.
They prefer censorship rather than rebuilding in both Ukraine and in Israel because they want war from both proxies.
F Blackrock! Who cares only worried about NZ and what Blackrock is doing to us, horrible destructive pieces of turd!
Economist Jacques Sapir says blackrock is not interested any more in ukraine because
1. huge corruption ( would have to pay for projects perhaps up to 35 % of the value)
2. lack of manpower. At least one million of ukrainian of working age dead or maimed for life.
3. strong population regression. Million of ukrainians living in europe that will never go back and
4. The most profitable assets are now in Russia’s territory